Psychology for Silicon Valley: Mimetic Theory (Part 1)

In today’s Cyb3rSyn newsletter, I explore the idea from psychology that made billions of dollars for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel - 'Mimetic Theory'.

I was an employee at PayPal for over 11 years and during the early days I spent a lot of time reading and learning about its founders - The PayPal Mafia! The mafia member that fascinated me the most was the contrarian, Peter Thiel.

Like many others, it was Thiel’s interviews that first led me to the works of René Girard, a French historian, philosopher of social science and interdisciplinary thinker who also turns out to be the originator of Mimetic Theory.

Nassim Taleb is known to mockingly tease that he doesn’t really understand what we study in psychology…

Professor Girard himself had taken a similar approach by studying old fiction and came up with Mimetic Theory and explored its knock-on effects on our society… All of these ideas deeply resonated with Peter Thiel, who happened to be a student of him at Stanford.

Girard described “mimetic desire” as the foundation of his theory:

Rivaling the ancient greeks in explaining human nature and psychology is old Tamil literature (my mother tongue) and the larger and more well-known Indian literature - the likes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. I was able to connect Girard’s works to these old tales and their characters (more in part 3).

Interestingly, Thiel never mentioned^* Girard’s name in the book ‘Zero to One’ because he feared that people have self-defense mechanisms against some of this stuff. He didn’t want them rejecting the whole book because they “know” that their desires are innate and made with no external influence.

While many have never heard of Girard, I’m convinced that future historians of Silicon Valley will regard him has one of the most important thinkers of his time.

Table of Contents

• What is Mimetic Theory?

• The cost of not knowing!

• Mimesis for entrepreneurs

  • Make our hearts sing

  • Use Mimesis to fight entropy!

  • The mimetic bet that made billions

  • Sleek Machine & Futuristic Beast

• Appendix: Book Recommendations

What is Mimetic Theory?

Most of what we desire is mimetic or imitative, not intrinsic. Humans learn through imitation. We desire what others desire - be it a Rolex, iPhone, Tesla, Gucci Bag, a big home with a pool, a fancy cruise or that expensive vacation to Europe.

Girard proposed that all desire is merely an imitation of another’s desire, and the desire only occurs because others have deemed something as worthwhile. This mimetic desire is triangular, involving the subject, model, and object. The subject mimics the model and they both desire the object. But, we are mostly unconscious about this phenomenon!

I won’t spend any more time explaining mimetic theory but have book recommendations towards the end for those that want to explore the topic in depth. Instead, I’ll focus on the implications of it for entrepreneurs, leaders and more importantly yourself as an individual. This will be explored in three different parts…

1. Entrepreneur: Any new product/service you build has to be desired by your potential customers. You understand and can connect with the emotions of your customers that make them buy and also as they use your products/services.

2. Leader: Great leaders are known to have tacit knowledge about the psychology and emotional disposition of their people. They “read the room” and use it wisely to create new models & continuously ride the dynamics of their organization.

3. Individual: The first step of any transformation is the transformation of the individual. Are you aware of your current and past mimetic desires? How can you use mimesis to make better decisions in the future?

Let’s dive into Part 1 …

The cost of not knowing!

The most underrated bias in mainstream management is quantification. Nowhere is it more evident than Silicon Valley! If you are jumping into entrepreneurship and everything you know about “management” is from the mainstream, this post is for you!

I don’t want you to repeat the mistakes of the mainstream. By sticking solely to "logical", "rational", "data-driven" & "quantified" ideas and decision making, your business may go extinct one day in the future.

This shocking real-life story comes from Tricia Wang, a social scientist, who recounts the downfall of Nokia (after Apple stepped into the smart phone business) due to its "big-data" driven decision making while missing the human elements.

Subscribe to "I'm Serious" to read the rest.